


Palpatine Meets The Walking Dead

by rubric



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Crack, Gen, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:02:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26487613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubric/pseuds/rubric
Summary: crack fic for a writing prompt that I can only describe as "Yoda/palpatine trapped together in a zombie apocalypse on Coruscant, with Anakin as kind of a Night King of jedi zombie white walkers"
Relationships: Sheev Palpatine & Yoda
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18
Collections: High Council Bounty 9/20, SWFF Cursed Content





	Palpatine Meets The Walking Dead

Coruscant was in chaos. And for once, Chancellor Palpatine was not its source. 

All was going according to the Chancellor’s plan, at first.

He’d arranged for the Skywalker boy and the Kenobi fool to “rescue” him on the dreadnought the _Invisible Hand_ , under the guise of his own kidnapping. There, the Skywalker child had given in to his own dark urges, killing Palpatine’s weaker apprentice, and further pushing the boy down the path of no return. 

All was going according to the Chancellor’s plan.

Until it wasn’t. 

It was a trap, disguised as an ancient Sith holocron. Discovered by his apprentice, Count Dooku, leader of the Separatists organization that Palpatine had cleverly orchestrated behind the scenes. 

Palpatine had watched with glee as the boy cut Dooku down. When the Count fell, the artifact hidden on his person tumbled out of his robes. A pyramid shaped fixture, glowing blue-black. Even Palpatine did not know Dooku had it. Nor what it was. The surprise on the Chancellor’s face was genuine as the Skywalker boy picked it up, turning it over in his hands curiously. 

Skywalker had stuffed the artifact into his pocket as they fled the scene. He'd insisted on bringing Kenobi with them, much to Palpatine’s annoyance. They’d barely escaped with their lives, crash landing on Coruscant. Afterward, the Chancellor, still playing the doddering Republic leader, returned to the Senate. The boy and Kenobi, ostensibly, went to report the success of their mission to the Jedi Council. Palpatine had noted, with some interest, that Skywalker did not mention the holocron to Kenobi, who had been knocked unconscious at the time of its discovery.

That’s when it all went wrong.

At some point, the boy must have figured out how to unleash the horrors within the artifact. 

On Coruscant, the disease burned through the clone army. A plague that affected the Midichlorian, the Republic scientists claimed. Genetically engineered to target the clones by the separatists. It was presumed their uniform genetic makeup allowed for the disease to spread unchecked. For those non-Force sensitives, it turned them into violent monsters, voids in the Force, brain dead and maniacal for blood, literally _eating_ anyone in their way. 

But that was not the worst of it.

For those with a stronger connection to the Force, the consequences were different… if no less disturbing. They were almost entirely cut off from the Force, but retained some semblance of mental function, though little of their humanity. Nearly powerless, with one exception.

Witnesses claimed they had the power to drain the living Force from any creature with their touch. At the heart of it all, the rumors said, was the Skywalker boy.

The disease spread through the Jedi temple like a wildfire. The city rioted in panic as the news spread that the Jedi were all but decimated. That what they became were monsters– commanded somehow by the Skywalker boy. Roaming the planet, they sought out the living, drawing from their living Force to feed back their own lost powers, until their victims became flesh-craving zombies like the clones. 

This was not as he planned, Palpatine admitted. But he could not argue with results.

From the Senate chambers, he gave speeches to calm the blubbering Senators and assure them that the situation was under control, and that the Republic would prevail. Meanwhile, stories of the strange infection spread throughout the Core. Every planet went on lockdown. On Coruscant, the spaceports were the first to shut down, first under government order, then overrun by the zombie horde. 

Those in the population not infected hid in terror, fighting back the blood crazed hordes on the streets. 

Palpatine, meanwhile, revelled in the fear, drawing it in to bolster his power. Never, not even at the most powerful vergences, had he felt more connected to the dark side. As the planet descended into chaos, Palpatine retreated to his chambers, and waited. 

He was arrogant in his confidence. Confident the Skywalker boy would come to him. That he, the greatest Sith in generations, would be able to turn the situation to his advantage. Make the child, finally, bow to him as his master. 

When his would-be apprentice finally arrived, Palpatine realized he had made a horrible, horrible mistake.

\---- 

Around him, Coruscant burned. He had leapt from his balcony, landing on an airspeeder manned by unsuspecting civilians. His timing was half skill, and half-luck. Though he managed to reconnect with the Force mid-air and brace himself last minute, his ribs were cracked in the fall. He used his lightsaber to cut a hole in the top, dropping himself in. The frightened couple had only seconds to let out strangled screams before Palpatine cut them down, taking over the controls. He winced at the blooming pain in his side as he considered his next move.

A ship, off planet, was a logical option. However, the space port was one of the first parts of the capital to be overrun by the zombie creatures. While Palpatine, with the aid of his dark side powers, could force his way through, the prudent move was to find somewhere to recuperate first, and gather his strength. 

A thought came to him. A secret bunker, deep within the Republic’s private archives, designed specifically to protect any dignitaries of state in the case of an emergency. It was known only to a few key members of the Senate… and might be one of the few places in the city that might still be safe.

He used his lightsaber to carve a path through the horde at the entrance of the building. Finally reaching the entrance to the secret chamber, he used the Force to open the lock. He allowed himself a moment to breath, still reeling with adrenaline and dark energy, as he shut the reinforced door behind him.

He turned around to see the small, green Jedi master lounging in a dust-covered chair, in a meditative response, his eyes narrowed to slits. 

“Master Yoda. So you are alive… after all.” Palpatine licked his lips. He quickly shifted into his Chancellor persona, pitching his voice with worry and concern he did not feel. “Thank heavens–” 

“Chancellor Palpatine. Strange circumstances we find ourselves in, we do,” the Jedi Master interrupted, flatly. 

In a split second he saw the ruse was up. The diminutive Jedi master knew who he was. He saw through the facade of the Republic Chancellor, to the truth of his nature. The power he wielded as Darth Sidious.

“Yes,” The Jedi’s master's eyes opened wider, his voice going low. “Know who you are, I do. A Sith Lord among us,” he said sadly, shaking his head. “Felt the disturbance in the Force, have I. But never suspected…” 

Palpatine dropped his mask, letting all of his contempt rise to the surface. “It’s time for us to end this. To end the Jedi and the decadence of the Republic.” He raised his hand and lightning sparks danced on the tips of his fingers in warning.

In response, the diminutive Jedi master just laughed and sat back in his chair.

“Darth Sidious, is it? Fight me, you will?” Yoda’s eyes narrowed. “Destroy me, you think you can? Emperor, you would make yourself? Perhaps. But Emperor of nothing, you shall be, if we do not stop the course of this sickness in the Force.”

At that, Palpatine just scoffed, blue lightning dying in his hands. 

The Jedi Master narrowed his eyes at the Chancellor knowingly. “Saw him, did you? The boy? Anakin Skywalker?” 

Palpatine shuddered at the memory.

_The Skywalker boy had arrived at Palpatine’s chambers with two members of the Jedi Council and three other knights, or what was left of them, rather. Pale ghosts, bled white as albinos, the rims of their eyes tinged with pink and brimming with insanity. Palpatine reached out with the Force. He’d expected of course, a nexus of dark side energy, something he could command as its master._

_Instead, he felt nothing from them. A void. It’s as if they were vacuums in the Force. Anakin was the worst of all, an active black hole, greedily sucking the energy around him._

_The feeling made him unbearably ill._

_Anakin stared at the Sith Lord with unabashed greed._

_“Chancellor Palpatine. You must help me.” Anakin had spoken slowly, as if remembering how to form the words._

_Palpatine was perched near his balcony, with a view of the airspace of Coruscant, usually abuzz with activity but now deathly still. This had been his plan, initially. He had been waiting for this, for the boy to come to him._

_Now, he did not move._

_“Anakin, my boy. What happened to you?” The Chancellor had tried to force his voice into a semblance of grandfatherly concern, tamping back the panic he felt under the surface._

_Anakin had stepped forward, motioning with his hands for the others to stay back. Flanking him what used to be the Jedi Council members Kenobi and Mace Windu. Their eyes were blank, yet clouded with a strange lust. One of the Jedi drooled, then spit at the floor, snarling._

_Anakin took another step forward. His hands were held in an open gesture, but there was no mistaking the intent. Palpatine had a vision of him being held in an iron grip, the life force sucked from him until he was a husk like the Kenobi man that stood next to him._

_Palpatine knew if he put his hands on him, he’d be rendered another member of the boy’s horde._

_Palpatine took another step back._

_“Take him,” Skywalker commanded. “But do not touch him. He is mine.”_

_The others stepped forward to obey their master’s command. Palpatine raised his hands, and blue lightning shot at Skywalker._

_Skywalker seemed to… revel in it. His eyes glowed even brighter._

_Palpatine felt the energy shift. The boy… he was absorbing his power!_

_Palpatine struggled to break the connection._

_“_ Yes, give it to me!! _” The boy thundered, crackling with energy, as his eyes glowed white._

_With increasing panic, Palpatine felt his life force draining slowly through the connection._

_At that point, Palpatine could think of only one thing to do._

_He cut himself off from the Force entirely._

_Backing toward the open balcony, the Republic Chancellor and powerful Sith Lord Darth Sidious took the only option left to him._

_He jumped._

Distracted by the reverie, Palpatine reeled. As he focused back into his present situation, Palpatine saw the Jedi master regarding him curiously. 

“My powers… they will save me in the way your feeble Jedi ones cannot.“ Palpatine sneered as he clutched his ribs.

“Wrong you are. A sickness in the Force, affects both darksider and lightsider alike. The more you draw on the Force, the faster you will attract the horde.” Yoda continued in his infuriatingly calm voice. “At the center of it, the boy is.”

“He is… possessed.” Palpatine sniffed. 

Yoda shrugged. “Ravaged the planet, this disease has. The council, my friends. Of the Jedi and Sith, you and I are left,” he shook his head sadly, his long ears twitching. 

Palpatine reviewed his options. He could strike the Jedi Master down now, and be rid of the last of, and one of his most formidable, enemies. 

But the situation, he had to admit, bore fresh consideration. 

“And what do you propose, _Jedi_? You have all appeared to be equally useless against the boy and his horde.”

“Trust in the Force, we must. Wait here, and you will learn.”

 _Trust_ , Palpatine sneered internally. The Chancellor did not trust the aging Jedi. More than once he fought back his feelings of contempt and considered Force-blasting the creature into a husk. Even injured, the dark power thrummed in him. Master Yoda, while not to be trifled with, was old. Weak, compared to the power he could wield.

And naive, to let his guard down in the presence of a powerful Sith Lord such as he.

Very well, Palpatine smiled to himself. He would play the doddering old fool, just the same, and see what he could learn. Palpatine, if anything, was patient. His father. His former master, Darth Plagueis. They had all made the mistake of underestimating him. The Jedi Master would do the same.

Nodding, the Chancellor walked over to an alcove, where a well-stocked, if dusty refreshments bar was tucked away in the shadows. 

“Master Yoda,” Palpatine drawled idly. “Would you not join me, for a drink? It’s the end of the world. Perhaps the end of the Jedi and Sith, and everything as we know it. ”

Without waiting for a response, Palpatine poured out two glasses of Corellian Brandy, the brown liquor glowing under the dim lighting. He took the seat opposite the Jedi Master, placing the drinks on the table between them.

“Hmmph. Drink this vile stuff, I usually do not. But disturbing times, are these,” Yoda admitted with a sigh. Closer, Palpatine observed fresh lines of worry in the old Jedi Master’s face. Dirt and sweat between the green creases. Yoda picked up the glass, which dwarfed his tiny hands, and considered it thoughtfully. 

Palpatine tilted the glass in his hand, watching the liquor swirl around and catch the sides.

“You’ve lived long, Yoda. Enemies we may be, but I do not discount your wisdom. What do you make of all of this?” Palpatine gestured vaguely with his free hand. With the other, he knocked back the glass, feeling the warmth take the edge off of the pain of his injuries. He considered drawing on the dark side of Force, but given Yoda's warning earlier and decided to stick to more... primitive palliatives. For now. 

Yoda just shook his head. “Legends, there were. In the time of the Sith Empire, thousands of years ago. Heard of Darth Vitiate, the Sith Emperor, have you?”

Of course he’d heard the stories. His introduction to the Sith had happened long before he had met his former master. Unlike the Jedi, he was not coddled and brainwashed into their particular limited viewpoint of the galaxy. They say the Sith were manipulative, but the Jedi kept knowledge from their own ranks, to support their version of history. He’d learned as much when he discovered his father’s secret archive on Naboo, where he discovered an ancient holobook that told a very different story of the Sith and the Jedi. 

“Yes,” Palpatine scoffed. “An ancient Sith. They say he was immortal, and drained entire planets of the Force to feed his power.” Even his former master, Darth Plagueis, doubted the stories, and Plageuis himself had mastered secrets of life and death Palpatine was yet to unlock. It was his master who claimed to have created Anakin Skywalker through his biological and Force manipulations. 

“Stories, surely,” Palpatine continued dismissively, not bothering to hide the skepticism in his voice. “You cannot believe them?” 

“In the Force, many things are possible.” Yoda just stated enigmatically. 

Never had Palpatine wanted to Force choke any creature more. 

Yoda continued. “The artifact that Skywalker found, one of the Sith Emperor’s creations it was, I’m afraid. Thought lost to centuries. Found it never should have been.” He peered through the glass, continuing to shake his head. 

“Count Dooku had the holocron in his possession before Skywalker,” Palpatine challenged. “He may have had it for years. Why didn’t the plague unleash before now?” 

Yoda had an answer for that at the ready. “Skywalker, the Chosen One, we thought. Powerful, he is, in the Force. Only perhaps with his command could it have been unlocked.” While Palpatine could not disagree with the statement, it sounded more like speculation than fact. 

“To undo the damage, reverse it we must,” Yoda continued, before falling into a contemplative pause. He watched the Jedi Master take a careful sip of his drink.

Waiting for the Jedi Master to continue, and seeing he was not, Palpatine prodded the conversation forward. “Yes, yes.” He waved his hand impatiently. “And how do you propose we do that?”

“Wait here, we will. Help will come. Soon,” he said with an air of finality. Then, inconceivably, the ancient Jedi Master then put his glass back on the table, and closed his eyes to rest, ending the conversation. 

Palpatine just sat wide-eyed, staring at the creature as he fell into a quiet snore.

\---- 

He sat there for hours, contemplating how many ways his lightsaber could carve holes in the arrogant Jedi Master’s little body, when he heard a knock from the door. 

Palpatine stood up, lightsaber already in hand, when the door burst open, and two figures emerged, shutting it behind them.

The first was a Mandalorian, shining in his Beskar and unreadable behind his mask. Behind him, something tall but… shifting about in a clumsy, unpredictable pattern. The squirrely creature was wearing... Republic senatorial robes?

…a Gungan? Palpatine blinked his eyes.

From behind him, he heard Master Yoda’s voice. 

“Made it, you have.”

“Who are these people?” Palpatine sneered, calling back to Yoda but keeping his eyes on the strangers. “You were… expecting them?”

“Chancellor! Yousa alive! Meesa was soo worried!” The Gungan called out with far too much enthusiasm for Palpatine’s liking, then picked him up and enveloped him in a hearty embrace.

"Put... me... down." The Chancellor warned as the breath was squeezed out of him. 

Fortunately, the Gungan complied. 

Palpatine was a hair’s breadth away from cutting the creature's head off for the insolent greeting alone. Yoda might have plucked the thought from his mind with the Force. 

“Do that you must not, Palpatine. Needed are all of us, if we are to stop the poison in the galaxy from spreading, and reverse its effects.” 

Thinking he might be going crazy, Palpatine looked at the group. He snorted. “The _saviors_ of the galaxy. It’s come down to this. A Gungan, a Sith Lord, a Mandalorian… and… _what_ are you anyway?” He said, stopping at Yoda with genuine confusion in his eyes.

In response, Yoda just smiled. 

“Matters not. What matters is this one.” Yoda pointed his finger at the Gungan.

“This fool?” Palpatine remembered the Senator, easily manipulated once he took the Naboo queen that the Anakin boy was so enamoured with out of play. “What could _he_ have to do with this?” 

Ignoring the Chancellor’s insult, the Gungan smiled and hopped about excitedly. “Meesa gots it! Meesa gots it, Master Jetii!!” 

Yoda waited patiently as the Gungan rooted around his robes. It was a few seconds before the creature finally found what he was looking for, proffering it to the Chancellor and the Jedi Master with both hands proudly.

It was the Plague Holocron. Activated, it glowed differently from when Palpatine had first seen it on Dooku’s ship. It pulsed with the Force vacuum that Palpatine had felt from the Skywalker horde, threatening to suck the energy out of the very room.

Recognizing it, Palpatine shrunk away reflexively. 

“How is he… how can he touch that thing without being Force drained?” Palpatine cried out, crooking a finger at the Gungan who seemed to be wholly unaffected. 

“Immune, he is,” Yoda responded lightly. 

Palpatine just stared, unable to comprehend.

Yoda continued. “Wrong we were, about so many things. Anakin Skywalker. The Chosen One he was not.” Yoda stated, shaking his head. “Sense it do you not, powerful Sith Lord?” A touch of amusement in his voice. 

“This one,” the Jedi Master continued, pointing at the Gungan, who looked confused at the exchange between Chancellor and Jedi.

“–Bring balance to the Force, his destiny is,” the wizened Jedi master concluded. 

The Supreme Chancellor, architect of the Republic's demise, and Sith Lord just stood there, mouth agape. Despite his skills as a master orator, manipulator of billions... no reasonable argument would come to him.

He found himself struck dumb.

Meanwhile, the Gungan stood there, grinning profusely, holding the holocron in his bare hand like it was nothing more than a Jogan fruit offered to a friend. 


End file.
